Bounce rate — the percentage of people who arrive on your site and then leave without looking at anything else — is a great example of a vanity metric: something people talk about a lot but don’t really act on.

If you find yourself wondering, "Is my bounce rate any good?" then you’re asking the Web analytics equivalent to asking, "Does my ass look big in these jeans?" But it doesn’t have to be that way. As my friend Jane Taylor says, it isn’t good or bad — it’s just data.

By looking a little closer at your bounce rate, you can make some decisions to improve your online marketing.